150 word response to the below answered discussion question in apa format with in-text citations and references

Question:

An organization’s landscape can be expansive and complex. Most organizations rely heavily upon information technology as a way to achieve outcomes. Conduct a needs assessment on your current organization or a familiar organization. Evaluate the cross-functionality of departments to identify gaps or opportunities for more effectively utilizing information technology to improve collaboration, efficiency, and communication. Recommend improvements based on your assessment. Include an explanation of the benefits in your proposal.

Answer:

I work in Cancer Care and many of the cancer patients have pain management issues. We had to be able to get the patients into the palliative care pain management program in a timelier fashion.  Palliative care team and the medical oncology team recently met with IT to develop a tasking function in the Allscripts electronic medical record.  Information technology (IT) had to build a task in our Allscripts referral system to directly send an appointment task to our Palliative care team. In addition, we discussed the need to have direct communication from service line to service line once the task was launched and make an appointment for the patient before they leave the medical oncology office.  Also, the medical oncologists needed to be on board with putting in consults sooner rather than later.

Effective communication was the key in this process. To achieve the best possible outcome, managers must understand how factors such as open communication climates, communication channels, the ability to persuade, communicating with candor, asking questions, and listening (Daft, 2013) affect a changing process.  

Medical oncology and palliative care teams decided some important factors that needed to addressed in addition to the above mentioned processes. All stage 4 cancers are automatically, upon diagnosis, referred to palliative care with the above tasking process in Allscripts followed by an assigned appointment. Stage 3 cancers will be referred dependent upon diagnosis and curative rate.  IT will create a palliative care tab. Communication notes will be available in Allscripts under the newly created palliative care tab.  Any patient with cancer pain management needs will be referred to palliative care at the onset of pain. All pain medications for cancer pain will be managed by palliative care.

Team meeting will occur on a monthly basis to review the processes. Immediate communication will be made for urgent matters from manager to manager.  Medical oncology physicians will discuss the palliative care process and what palliative will mean to the patient.  The goal of palliative care is to prevent or treat, as early as possible, the symptoms and side effects of the disease and its treatment, in addition to the related psychological, social, and spiritual problems (NIH, n.d.). Palliative care brochures placed in all waiting areas and exam rooms. Staff education was done with the entire process as discussed with a stress as always on excellent patient care with the goal of patient comfort.